What Would You Do If You Knew You Couldn't Fail?

“Ego always wants more. It’s a tapeworm that is never satisfied. And if we listen to it, we end up… drowning in stuff.” I wrote that a year ago and it remains a cornerstone reminder that forgiveness is necessary. In truth, it is simply the shortcut to remembering where we already are. This ACIM lesson (#256 God is the only goal I have today) says “If sin had not been cherished by the mind, what need would there have been to find the way to where you are?”In other words, if I hadn’t judged it as somehow deficient, then I wouldn’t need forgiveness to find my way back to God, but since I did, I need a tool to let myself off the hook. That tool is forgiveness. That tool is the Atonement which recognizes my oneness with everyone and heals me of the belief that I need to do everything by myself. It was the main topic of discussion in last night’s ACIM class as we read Entering the Ark. Alone we can’t recognize our perfection. It is only in the contrast found in interacting with another that we see how much nicer it is to be in God’s thought system than it is to be in the ego’s. I can see at last that I prefer God as my only goal. From last year’s blog post, lesson 256:

Good is our goal

It’s strange this combination of wondering where the days have slipped away to and the weight of getting through each of them. It happens when I am waiting for some event to pass, is this case the culmination of my deal from hell which hopefully today will either move forward to be blessed for closing next week, or fall apart and into the need for damage control. I am praying for the former, of course. Lately, I feel like I don’t have the energy for much. Treading water does that. I feel challenged to be present to my own life because my thoughts (fears) make it too painful and yet I am pissing my life away. It’s sad. I will never get those moments back and I have squandered them.

Ah, there is only the here and now, and oh, by the way, this is a dream/illusion that I created but it doesn’t have to be the nightmare ego would have it be. It can be a happy, peaceful dream and the way for that to happen is via forgiveness.

As often as I remind myself that I am making up the meaning that all events have for me, I still find myself feeling desolate, none of which is helped by my grief over the loss of our cat. I don’t want to deal with anyone. I don’t want to interact with people. I have to, of course. I have messes to prevent, and houses to show. In-between, Jay’s sciatica is a pleasant distraction (sick as that is!) – an excuse to keep the world at bay.

Forgiveness is the means by which I let myself off the hook for not doing a better job within the dream. It is the path I take to unearth what erroneous beliefs I am still clinging to. This morning I read Janet Bertolus’ Ten Things that Piss-Off Stressand when I came number four, Believing you have enough, I felt a tug inside. There was the issue. Even though I am rich relative to a good percent of the world’s population, counting pennies to see what we can afford arouses self-pity. I’ve been putting off calling the plumber to go search for the leak in the crawl space that is making the house stink. Buying a truck for Jay to replace the side-lined convertible that a friend donated to us a while back will need to wait until after we pay our taxes. Yet I chucked some leftovers this morning because we failed to eat them before I became suspicious of them. I still have too much stuff. I spent the other day at a friend’s house helping her sort through things so she can move and since she has a bit of a hoarding problem, I was super-aware of the needlessness of most of the crap we were sifting through. I kept checking myself so I wouldn’t slip into judgment. Who would I be judging – myself or her?

Ego always wants more. It’s a tapeworm that is never satisfied. And if we listen to it, we end up like my friend, drowning in stuff.

God is my goal. I can’t beat myself up for the lousy job I do. I can only reach for forgiveness (again!) and move forward.

The way to God is through forgiveness here. There is no other way. If sin had not been cherished by the mind, what need would there have been to find the way to where you are? Who would still be uncertain? Who could be unsure of who he is? And who would yet remain asleep, in heavy clouds of doubt about the holiness of him whom God created sinless? Here we can but dream. But we can dream we have forgiven him in whom all sin remains impossible, and it is this we choose to dream today. God is our goal; forgiveness is the means by which our minds return to Him at last.

And so, our Father, would we come to You in Your appointed way. We have no goal except to hear Your Voice, and find the way Your sacred Word has pointed out to us.

I practice naming the stories I am telling to try to get what I think I want. Lately, I seem to be stuck on the fan-favorite “feel sorry for me” story. In the world of not-enough, I am surreptitiously telling this story in an attempt to garner sympathy. You’d think I was standing on the street corner begging for change.

As a side-note, these days every time I see one of these folks (and there are many in Albuquerque, often standing next to the signs posted all over the city that say “If you need help with food or shelter, call 311”), I think: if they put that much energy into finding a job….

My reflection, of course – if I put as much energy into working on my business as I do in complaining about what I am lacking….

I remember my sister and how much energy she used to put into trying to get out of doing the dishes when we were kids. It was comical, really. Just doing them would have been so much easier. But then again, isn’t that true of most of the things I torment myself with? Don’t I make way-too-big-a-deal over many of the tasks on my daily to-do list?

Ah, the “feel sorry for me” story again. I really need to ditch that fucker.

And there we go, back to the need for forgiveness.

God is my only goal. I catch myself and breathe into the present moment. The sky is blue dotted with a few white, puffy clouds. The air is that perfect temperature it gets when heading into fall. The house is quiet and peaceful. What if I just stopped and appreciated that rather than obsessing over what I fear might happen, rather than complaining about things not going my way? If God is my goal, then Christ’s vision can be mine. The world doesn’t have to change, I do. The world follows suit.

The psychological pain is less today. I am coming to the point where I can accept that whatever happens, love is still there, unless I choose to exile it, of course.

The wind is blowing. The trees sway softly. The neighborhood birds are delighted by the birdseed we’ve filled the feeders with. Life Is good. Let me drink that in a moment before I head back to move amid the world’s insanity.

God is my only goal and therefore love is my only goal. I choose peace. I choose happiness. I rest in the comfort of God and know that it doesn’t matter about appearances, I am safe and I am loved.